영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

문제 1

Fast fashion refers to ①**cheap**, trendy clothing produced quickly and replaced almost as fast as it is bought. Because these garments are designed to be worn only a few times, huge amounts of fabric end up in landfills every year, and the dyeing process ②**pollutes** rivers near factories. In contrast, a ③**growing** number of brands are turning toward the circular economy, an economic model in which materials are reused, repaired, or recycled instead of being thrown away after a single use. For example, some companies ④**collect** old clothes, break down the fibers, and weave them into new fabric, while others let customers rent outfits for special occasions rather than buying garments they will barely wear. These approaches keep resources circulating within the system longer, ⑤**increasing** demand for raw materials. Therefore, shifting from a throwaway habit toward a circular one may be essential for making the fashion industry sustainable.

문제 2

Turning on automatic captions used to mean settling for garbled text full of obvious errors, but recent speech-recognition models have made same-language captions accurate enough that many viewers now leave them on by default. (A) For viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing, this improvement has quietly transformed everyday access to video content that once required a human transcriber and a considerable amount of time to caption properly. (B) The technology listens to audio, breaks it into individual sounds, and matches those sounds against a massive library of words and phrases to predict what was actually said. (C) The system still stumbles over overlapping speakers, strong accents, and specialized vocabulary, occasionally producing captions that are unintentionally funny.

문제 3

Imagine two factories making the same product: one in a country with strict carbon rules, and one in a country with almost none. (A) However, critics claim it unfairly burdens developing countries, which often lack money to modernize factories quickly. For example, a small exporter in a poorer nation might struggle to pay the added charge, though it contributes little to global emissions. Still, if wealthier nations pair the policy with technical support, it could become a genuinely fair tool for cutting emissions worldwide. (B) Supporters argue that the system protects domestic industries and pushes foreign manufacturers toward cleaner methods. (C) The factory facing stricter rules often spends more, which can make its goods pricier than those made elsewhere. To fix this imbalance, some governments have introduced the carbon border adjustment mechanism, a policy charging imported goods a fee based on how much carbon was released while producing them.

문제 4

One reason many consumers hesitate to switch to greener options involves a specific pricing gap that economists have named. (A) This price gap frequently discourages shoppers who support sustainability in principle but cannot justify the additional expense, while wealthier consumers can absorb the premium more easily, which creates unequal participation in green markets. (B) This gap, known as the green premium, describes the extra cost that consumers must pay when they choose an environmentally friendly product over a cheaper, conventional alternative; for example, an electric vehicle or solar-powered appliance often carries a higher price tag than its gasoline-powered or coal-based counterpart, even though it produces fewer emissions. (C) To narrow this gap, governments have introduced subsidies and tax credits that lower upfront costs, and as production scales up and innovation continues, many economists expect the premium to shrink steadily.

문제 5

Not all obstacles to renewable energy are technical or financial; some are psychological. (A) In contrast, switching demands research, upfront cost, and trust in unfamiliar technology, all of which can seem risky compared with doing nothing. For example, a neighborhood association might repeatedly postpone a vote on shared solar panels, not because the plan is flawed, but because members are reluctant to leave their routine. Therefore, boosting renewable adoption may depend less on proving its advantages and more on designing programs that make the first step feel easy. (B) Behavioral economists use the term status quo bias to describe a tendency to prefer the present situation over a new alternative, even when the alternative would bring greater benefits. (C) This bias helps explain why many households hesitate to switch to renewable energy, such as installing solar panels on their roofs. Although solar panels can lower electricity bills over time, homeowners often stick with their current power source because it feels safe and requires no immediate effort.

문제 6

For years, a small riverside village had suffered from flooding that grew worse with each passing summer. (A) In addition, several families whose houses stood in the most vulnerable areas relocated to higher ground, and the village installed an early warning system that sent alerts to residents' phones whenever river levels rose dangerously fast. (B) When a powerful storm struck three years later, the new measures proved effective, and the village suffered only minor damage instead of the devastating losses it had previously faced, becoming a model for neighboring communities. (C) Frustrated residents eventually decided to pursue climate adaptation, adjusting their infrastructure and habits to reduce the damage caused by increasingly unpredictable weather, and engineers began by widening the drainage canals surrounding the village so that excess rainwater could flow away more efficiently.

문제 7

Because this feedback loop relies entirely on light rather than on the clock on the wall, melatonin release can shift dramatically when a person travels across time zones or works through the night. Melatonin is a hormone produced by a small gland deep within the brain, and its release follows a remarkably predictable daily pattern. ( ① ) Levels stay low throughout the bright hours of the day, begin rising in the evening as darkness falls, peak in the middle of the night, and then decline again as morning approaches. ( ② ) This rhythm is controlled primarily by light: specialized cells in the eye detect brightness and send signals that either permit or suppress melatonin production, which is why exposure to bright screens late at night can delay its release and make falling asleep more difficult. ( ③ ) Unlike some hormones that directly cause the body to perform a task, melatonin does not force sleep to occur; instead, it signals to the rest of the body that night has arrived, preparing various systems to shift into a lower-energy state. ( ④ ) Because of this signaling role, taking melatonin supplements at the wrong time can shift a person's internal clock in the opposite direction from what was intended. ( ⑤ )

문제 8

주어진 문장: In other words, those who did the least to cause the problem often end up paying the highest price for it. When people discuss climate change, they often focus only on rising temperatures or melting ice, treating it as a purely scientific issue. ( ① ) However, the concept of climate justice reminds us that the causes and consequences of climate change are distributed unevenly across the globe. ( ② ) Wealthy, industrialized nations have historically released the largest share of greenhouse gases while building their economies, yet developing nations, which contributed comparatively little, frequently suffer the most severe droughts and floods. ( ③ ) This gap between responsibility and suffering raises a serious ethical question that science alone cannot answer. ( ④ ) For example, a farming community in a low-income country may lose its entire harvest to an unusual flood, even though its members have never owned a car or flown on a plane. ( ⑤ ) Therefore, tackling climate change requires more than new technology; it demands fair policies supporting the very communities least responsible for causing the crisis.

문제 9

주어진 문장: This was her very first trip to the region, so she had nothing to compare the scene to except old photographs taken by earlier scientists. A documentary director named Mira first traveled to a remote Arctic glacier to film its towering cliffs of blue ice, which seemed frozen in time. ( ① ) Standing before the massive wall, she assumed such an enormous structure could hardly change within a lifetime. ( ② ) Five years later, however, she returned to the very same coordinates, expecting her camera to capture an identical scene. ( ③ ) Instead, she discovered that the glacier had retreated so dramatically that the ice cliffs, once visible from her original position, had nearly disappeared, leaving bare rock and pools of meltwater behind. ( ④ ) Comparing the two sets of footage side by side, Mira realized that a transformation she had expected to take centuries was actually happening within a single decade. ( ⑤ ) This encounter convinced her that climate change, which she had previously regarded as a distant statistic, was in fact an urgent process reshaping landscapes before her eyes.

문제 10

This is precisely the kind of disruption that white noise is designed to prevent. Many people struggling to fall asleep in noisy environments turn to white noise machines, devices that emit a steady, uniform sound covering a broad range of frequencies. ( ① ) The appeal lies in a phenomenon called auditory masking, in which a constant background sound makes sudden noises, such as a slamming door, less noticeable to the sleeping brain. ( ② ) Without this masking effect, an abrupt change in sound is far more likely to trigger a brief awakening, even if the sleeper does not consciously remember it the next morning. ( ③ ) Studies comparing sleep in quiet rooms with sleep alongside white noise have found that participants using white noise experienced fewer of these brief awakenings and reported feeling more rested. ( ④ ) However, researchers caution that the benefit depends heavily on volume and consistency, since noise that is too loud or that varies unpredictably can itself become a source of disruption rather than a remedy. ( ⑤ ) Such backfiring effects remind us that more sound is not always better for a restless sleeper.